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POEMS FROM "Looking for a Friend" |
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My 27th book, "Looking For A
Friend" was published eighteen years ago in 1980. Having just completed the elements
trilogy "The Sea Around Me", "Coming Close To The Earth" and "We
Touch The Sky" I felt a certain freedom from nature and wanted to set down some
thoughts on friendship. The elements, time and seasons, are apparent in nearly everything
I write and there are plenty of references to time and climate in "Looking For A
Friend" but getting into it was to mean a return to the more intimate style of
writing that had characterized my first poetry.
I had just completed "The Power Bright & Shining" and a book of meditations,
"An Outstretched Hand" and they would both be published later in the year. I was
spending most of my time between tours at an apartment on the East Side of New York City,
which is about as far away from nature as you can get. My mornings started with a walk
cross-town and back and before I went to bed I’d hike twenty blocks or so to take the
night air and test the temperature of the city. It was a happy time, if the writing
process is ever happy. It’s great to have written something and be finished with it,
but the process is never much fun.
For the next several days I thought I’d collect some of the poems from "Looking
For A Friend" here and talk about them. "Night Walker" is, what else, a
meditation on walking at night. Mind you that was eighteen years ago and I’m sure
these instructions are sorely out of date. Walking to be walking and going to no sure
address isn’t something I would recommend these days in middle night Manhattan. I was
never frightened in New York, it’s a lovely place. Big and warm and friendly and
though the natives are said to be fed up with the tourists, according to this
morning’s New York Times, I don’t believe it for a minute. Besides I was never a
tourist there, I was at home the minute I laid eyes on it.
- RM
9/28/98 |
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Karen Allen o
Chester A. Arthur o Danny Baldwin o Jose Bissett o Peter Brown o Diane Cilento o Bill Dana o Glynis Johns o Joshua Logan o Allan Ludden o Guy Pearce o Donald Pleasence o George Rebh o Horace Walpole o Kate Winslet |
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To love somebody
truly, it is not necessary to be false to all other relationships.
Friendship never wears a mask. It removes the necessity for
masquerading and false faces.
God never holds back.
The only thing we own without condition is experience. |
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NIGHT WALKER |
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Go out of an evening
allow yourself the pride
and punishment
of being jostled by the crowd.
You may begin your preparation
early
but do not leave the house
till half past ten or later.
Begin to think about
the night ahead
early in the day. Make a plan -
not too detailed, but one
that set in
motion
will give wheels and
turnstiles
to the night as well.
Concentration
during sunlight hours
should offer each of us
the luxury
of walking through the night
without a stumble or a lurch,
missing nothing catching everything
but allowing us the chance,
the privilege of being caught.
Streetlights do not hang like stars
they are strung like streetlights
but the shadows they invite and make
are wondrous all the same
hiding places if you’ll hide
finding places if you’re looking -
Go out of an evening just to walk.
Smile back, if smiled at.
Talk, speak up if you are spoken to.
If the street is new to you
inquire about the shops,
the weather. Say anything,
but something.
There can be no initiation without
the firm desire of the initiate.
Question if you’re curious
and listen even if the answers
seldom seem worth hearing.
Remember that the other walkers
have planned this evening too
and so you have a kinship.
Go out alone and do not be
Afraid if you return alone.
Your life has nights
and evenings up ahead
in great abundance.
Even when you feel
that you have reached the end
or edge of life,
hold on.
Life itself will ultimately
take care of you.
While loneliness is part
and parcel of certain days
and certain weeks,
knowing that it is will help
to make you ready
when it comes.
Aloneness is quite different,
a privilege and a joy when
you have brushed against
too many shoulders or dying
light of dance hall disco
or the bright unyielding
sunlight of the beach.
Don’t forget
what you’ve always known
you are the captain of your ship
if not the master of your soul.
Your soul belongs to God,
if your ship goes drifting
he will guide it back.
Since every walk
however short
is still a voyage
you may chart the trip
even if the destination
is unknown.
Avoid all desperation
in the quiet of your room
or at the corner waiting for
the light to change.
Desperation is the enemy
of making lasting friends.
Do not be afraid of fog or cold
approaching mists or morning
coming.
Slow or fast.
Make way
for children running
down the block.
Leave your watch at home.
Go out of an evening unmindful
of the clock. Time travels too
and you will learn with little study
that time becomes a friend
finally and forever.
Do not ask the definition
of a friend. He / she is that one
without whose company
death and dying set in earlier,
and living is made more pleasurable.
That is not to say a friend
can make you live, only that living
for a friend or fancy is the ultimate,
the road away from self, the path
that leads from selfishness
to selflessness.
For if you don’t know where
It is you came from it’s hard
to ascertain just where you might be
heading - in life or down the block.
A friend can help you sort that out
and will.
For now, go out
of an evening.
You waiting ones
and you walkers of the night
I address my words and
worrying to you.
I am involved with you.
Your joys are mine and though
I may have sorrows of my own
I’ll take on yours,
but in moderation only.
I expect you to get on with it.
Remember I’m involved
if only silently. A friend I am
and will be.
Night walkers all need friends. -
from "Looking For A Friend," 1980 with new material, 1998 |
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